ARS LITERARIUM
Volume X Journal of Art and Literature
The literary journal of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Rutgers Health
Front Cover: Gardening
PGY-3 - Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Rohini Bahethi
ARS LITERARIUM
VOLUME X
Ars Literarium is published annually by The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Center for Humanism and Medicine at New Jersey Medical School.
COUNCIL MEMBERS
Manasa Ayyala, MD
Director of The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Center for Humanism and Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Tanya Norment
Program Administrator of The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey
Center for Humanism and Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Faculty Advisors
Andrew Berman, MD
Professor of Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Manasa Ayyala, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Director of The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Center for Humanism and Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Editor-In-Chief
Sedra Alabed, MS-2
Associate Editor
Karen Ebenezer, MS-2
Art + Literary Editor
Esha Shah, MS-2
Graphic Designers
Yara Abbo, MS-2
Mariam Trichas, MS-2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ars Literarium’s annual publication is possible due to the support of The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey Center for Humanism and Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
We extend our heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey for its generous support.
Thank you to Tanya Norment, Dr. Ayyala, and Dr. Berman for their advice, mentorship, and guidance throughout the year.
In loving memory of Dr. James Hill...
‘Dr. James Hill’ was among the first names that would greet the new students of NJMS. His was the first phone number we entered into our phones, the first office number we memorized, and the first name we said aloud in moments of crisis, on blue Mondays, and shelf-week Fridays when we just needed to hear a kind voice.
His name now features in the stories of all who had the pleasure of knowing him - fond memories of his remarkably quick wit, level-headed grace, and above all, extraordinary leadership as Associate Dean for Student Affairs at NJMS. Dr. Hill fiercely advocated for students, faculty, and staff, invited vulnerability with curiosity, and sprinkled extra joy on this otherwise unrelenting journey.
His absence is felt deeply throughout our campus, commensurate only with the years of encouragement and guidance he poured into his students and colleagues. Nevertheless, we know his legacy will live on in each of us. Thank you for everything, Dr. Hill.
MISSION STATEMENT
Ars Literarium seeks to express the medical narrative through the creative voices of the members of the Rutgers Health campuses.
The journal provides an outlet for members of the community who spend endless hours managing the stresses and responsibilities of patient care to find peace through creative expression. Transforming memories or emotions from an intense day spent with patients into words or visual art allows for a stronger, healthier connection to the self and a deeper appreciation of the patient perspective.
For information, inquiries, and submissions, please email us at: arslit@njms.rutgers.edu.
DEAR READER...
Welcome to Volume X of Ars Literarium, an artistic mosaic of human experiences.
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” Kahlil Gibran.
The tones of darkness dictated the silence that filled the conference room as each submission was reviewed. The themes of mortality and death cried aloud as we searched for hope and rebirth in every stroke and word. “Did we do something wrong?” was the thought that shattered the year-long desire for a volume that fosters healing. Walking down the hallway into a desperate beat of beeps and antiseptic laced air, it became clear that within the depths of darkness, hope hid. Our work as caregivers takes place in a delicate space between life and death, where we see humanity at its most vulnerable.
Without our prompting, nearly every piece submitted this year has centered around sensations of loss, mortality, and the large debt of sorrow provoked by those same sensations. In perusing the literary and artistic works of our colleagues and friends, we invite you to hold their grief, meet it with empathy, and to shake hands with it as a friend. Medicine, for all its discipline and duty, its routine and rigor, is an endeavor of love. We understand why, in moments of death and in brushes with mortality, the families of patients often hold healthcare professionals responsible for their sadness and anger. It is the cost of the job. To stand between life and death is to be a receptacle for rage. But I will take on your fear, your sadness, your anger, our writers, artists, and poets seem to be saying. I will stand fast. It is the cost of love.
It is with great honor that we introduce you to the tenth edition of Ars Literarium. Each piece was woven with warmth to mellow a chest hollow with grief and catch the unsaid love in brimming eyes. As you navigate through the pages, we wish for the whispers of artistic compassion and tenderness to help you find solace in the diverse pieces reflecting universally relatable narratives. Art is the great medium through which life may be understood, and so as the memories of loss flood, please accept the sincere hand of solidarity from each artist and writer, not to erase the grief but rather to embrace it with love. Even in the shadow of mortality, acts of grace, connection, and resilience persist. We hope you, dear reader, feel the same deep, duty-bound love for life, and humanity in the pages to come.
Sincerely,
The Editors of Ars Literarium
The Loneliness of Chronic Pain
Emily Xie
Class of 2027
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Acrylic
Suddenly Very
A patient wheeled into a hospital
Reassured by friends and family
Confident
Unafraid
Encounters a world full of conundrum and frenzy and hears talks of histories and diagnostics, of imaging and labs, of beta blockers and diuretics, of treatment plans and prognoses, of social support and hospice.
And in his observations of the happenings around him experiences a monitor ringing, and a brother chatting, and a fluorescent light shining, and a TV playing, and a friend laughing, and a medication dispensing, and a stethoscope listening, and doctors conversing, and a disinfectant smelling, and a syringe stabbing, and an IV flowing, and a fluid dripping, and a neighbor snoring, and a cough worsening, and an alarm beeping, and a roommate shouting, and a nurse running, and a gown tearing, and a mother crying, and a dad staring, and a defibrillator shocking, and an anesthesiologist intubating, and a blood transfusion circulating, and a ventilator breathing, and a machine dialyzing, and pressors maintaining, and a chaplain praying
And is
Suddenly very
Afraid
Joseph Santitoro
Class of 2025
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Rooted
Digital Painting
Ahmed Sabra
Class of 2025
Rutgers
New Jersey Medical School
The Way
I had a dream
I was a butterfly
Who was dreaming
That I was me
When I woke up
I didn’t know what to think
Her ribs crackled Beneath my hands
While she looked Up and away
As the crucifix on my neck Made soft repeated clinks
When her mother came And saw her girl
The screams Pierced my heart
Her father stood Just outside the room
His soul Worlds apart
Her eyes still open I closed my own
Fighting for that dream
Where she was a butterfly And all this nightmare
Was something that had never been
Daniel Liggio
Class of 2025
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Branch Brook in Bloom
Oil Pastel
Lena Kheir, MD PGY-1, Otolaryngology
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
A Song Without Words
I stand there wordlessly in my papery yellow gown
Stethoscope cold against my chest
Breath muffled behind my mask
Feeling I have intruded upon a private serenade, Silenced abruptly when I walked in.
When the endless alarms, chaos, voices follow me home
So too does the image of her sitting quietly at his bedside.
I wonder if she hears her child’s voice in the coarse breaths of his trach.
Catches glimpses of his future in the fluttering of his eyelids.
Is the gurgling breath in his chest a babbling brook to her ears?
The swift beating of his heart the percussion?
The vitals monitor tones a strident soprano?
The rustle of his contracted limbs against the bedsheets like gentle brushes on a snare?
Is his every gasp a melodic reminder he is still here?
I imagine she recalls the memory of his embrace when she holds his cold hands That in this humming hospital bed, she instead sees the man he was before Perhaps she hears hope in the tune that plays so insistently in her ears
I want to know the other half of this duet she has painstakingly composed. Yet even when his mouth opens, I cannot catch the verse. No matter how closely I listen, I do not know the words.
Try as I might, I hear instead the ballad of a mother’s grief for her childHer only son, who once sang the brightest song of life and promise And has now simply fallen mute.
Catherine Ye, MD PGY-2, Internal Medicine
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Disconnect (Work-Life Balance)
Class of 2028
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Mateen Abbasi
Photograph
When You Wish Upon a Zebra
The fresh, short whitecoat in tow, Neck saddled with a Littman, After the years of studying required to enter the horse stables, Finally able to hear hoofbeats.
But after horse after horse after horse, Endless rhythmical gallops Like a day at the Derby You wish upon a zebra...
Oh and when your wish comes true! In some ways, just how you studied! Other ways, their stripes are a new and unexpected pattern! Zebras don’t always read textbooks after all.
You tell you’re the closest in your herd I SAW THIS ZEBRA AND IT WAS SO COOL
As they swap their zebra encounter for yours. Do you think we could write up this zebra? Could be a good case report.
But behind the hoofbeats Between the stripes Lies a zebra
Wishing to be horse Whose gallop helped you remember your normal S1/S2.
Elan Baskir, MD PGY-4, Medicine/Pediatrics
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
The First Teacher
Zahra Adahman
Biomedical Science PhD candidate
Rutgers
School of Graduate Studies/Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Acrylic on Canvas
From Your Doctor, on the 35th World AIDS Day
Part 1: Remembrance
I keep the card that you made me
In the drawer of supplies and files
Where I search for documents
That I once stashed away in piles
I keep the snapshot of your MRI
In the case report I remember most Its characteristic contrasts
Showing how to interpret and diagnose
I keep the texture of your skin
And the tracings of scars in my mind
They weaved the story of your convalescence And memorialized how our narratives aligned
My fingers brush the cut-out paper
With its words etched in scented pen
Greens, blues, yellows, and reds
Each marks the moment you traced them
I keep the card that you made me
As a remembrance of - you
Who taught me, and gifted me
More than you ever knew
Part 2: Commitment
Sometimes I wonder If I got it all wrong If I stumbled and I stuttered Just to keep moving on
Often, I wonder If I can stay the course If I can give away this part of me And still ask more from the source
And then I see you, Your diagnoses, and histories
The landscape of your illnesses
The map of your trajectories
And then I listen
As you pull back a veil You tell me secrets You inhale, you exhale
This is the commitment
When you tell me what you’ve seen And we can marvel at survival
In the quiet moments between
Michelle DallaPiazza, MD Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease
Rutgers
New Jersey Medical School
BECAUSE I SAID SO
ON THE FIFTEENTH DAY THAT MARIETTA HAD NOT EATEN , the psychiatry team knew they could no longer take care of her. With each day, her blood pressure softened, and by the time the medicine team was consulted, her heart was laboring at 130 beats per minute. Six hours at a time each day, Marietta closed her eyes and prayed, summoning her remaining strength to hold her shaking arms open toward the sky.
Every morning and afternoon we visited her and every morning and afternoon she would not tell us who or what was keeping her from eating. We asked if it was God, if it was herself, if it was a voice in her head. Was she taking her Risperidone? Her answer, always: I understand I will die, I will not eat. I know it will be slow and painful, I will not. And praying resumed.
The Bible condemns gluttons. Children will be made to sit at the dinner table until they finish their vegetables. Since the beginning of time, force-feeding has disturbed something deeply innate in us. Feeding Marietta against her will was something no one wanted to think about for very long. When the decision was made to place a nasogastric tube, Marietta cried and gurgled and bucked. A hand pressed against her forehead as the tube snaked further. Her suppliant arms were now bound by wrist restraints, so she prayed out loud to Heaven.
For many situations in medicine, there is no guidebook on how to proceed. When we pledge we will do no harm, who decides what harm means? For now, as a student, it is not me. For now, I learn and I watch, and think about her.
Casey Hamlet
Class of 2025
Rutgers
New Jersey Medical School
Heart Sounds Illustrated Using a Left Ventricular Loop
Sketch
Justin Aoyama
Class of 2025
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
The View from the Window; Photograph
Yaqian Xu, MD, MPH PGY-2, Neurology
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
What do our patients see
My Dearest Christina
I am ashamed I never had the words to carry a friend from her death to the stars correctly All the hours, days and months grew likely, likely to remind me of the things in her that I found so dear.
Trying not to think, wonder, imagine the world without her.
Shamefully, I have wondered about the months, years, and what seems like an eternity in which we didn’t keep in touch.
Carefully, I sat down star gazing, looking for a star that would represent her so gracefully.
I thought of what would have, could have, should have been said, before that last beat.
Nevertheless, I realize, sometimes the best thing that I can do is not to think, but have faith in God and his choices.
Dino Santiague, BS Management Assistant, Office of Faculty Affairs
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Blossom, No Matter What
Ankita Punetha, PhD
Research Associate II, Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics
Rutgers
New Jersey Medical School
Untitled. Fredonia, Texas
Photograph
The total solar eclipse reminds me of the transient nature of life and the importance of seizing each moment—both in medicine and beyond.
Yonatan Greenstein, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Within the realm where shadows coyly play, The radiology room in black and white, A symphony of images hold sway, A dance of contrasts, revealing light. In pixels and in grayscale, answers found, A monochrome domain of discerning art, Where shadows whisper secrets all around, A canvas painted, pixel by pixel. The radiance of health in stark relief, A silhouette against the backdrop gray, Each image tells a tale, a life’s motif, In shades of gray, the stories lay. So, in the quiet room where readings bloom, Black and white reveals life’s intricate loom.
Thomas Schwendhelm, MD
Radiology Resident
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
The Night Shift
Keys click-clacking away,
Not knowing if it’s still night or day.
Collecting all my thoughts into my notes, including chief complaints in quotes.
Another consult at 4 in the morning,
Hearing one more urgent phone ring.
Eliciting another patient’s history,
Trying my best to solve a new clinical mystery.
Waiting on a chest CT read, Looking for any sort of diagnostic lead.
Hunger pangs and headaches hit, yet for 2 more hours I’ll have to sit.
Nibbling on my granola bar,
I open up a patient’s MAR.
Nivetha Srinivasan, MD PGY-1, Anesthesiology
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Taste My Depth
Here I am, doctor, a whole being like you plunged in a body like yours, of flesh, blood, and bones, dwelling in the dawn of Dharma. surrendered to your frame. My thoughts, like yours, touch and taste my depth, they dress me with the extremes, wisdom, courage, and brilliance, to cope with pain, sadness, and craziness. Sometimes, they bend me as a willow branch, or break me as a crystal glass, right there, in that operating room, where you take the hardest act of dance. Other times, they unite you and me together, and turn us into an unshakable rock, no earthquake can shatter.
And yet, by the twilight, I am still fooled by the unknown, that lays ahead of me, questioning my being here, sinking in night’s darkness, just to reach for any invisible sparkles. Like, how each of us shined uniquely, out of the maternal divine dome?
Why did all of us come here, some tiptoeing on the dessert’s burning sand, others digging the trenches deep, engraving their path on this Earth?
And yet, at the end, doctor, we are all held mysteriously, at an unknown place, just to meet the last resort of our breath, just to hug our sunset.
January 2024
Ermire Mitre Kokomani NJMS Library Tech I Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Gardening
Watercolor
Rohini Bahethi, MD
PGY-3,
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
La luz sola
La luz sola, Sobrevolando
Andando despacio pero incesantemente por el cielo Hacía un destino desconocido, Brilla.
Un mar oscuro, Sin energía, Sin vivacidad, Una extensión calma de infinidad.
La iluminación astral Disminuye rápidamente.
The Solitary Light
The solitary light, Hovering in place
Moving slowly but steadily across the sky Towards an unknown destination, Shines.
A dark sea, Without energy, Without life, A calm infinite expanse.
The astral illumination Declines rapidly.
Anurag Modak, MD
Class of 2024
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Eternal Light
The microscope is held aloft in a sea of darkness, Illuminating the gyri and sulci of the exposed brain below. Its harsh, sterile light creates a veritable barrier So hot, so intense, it threatens to explode forth at any moment.
The screens scattered across the room provide companionship to this lonely machine And I, residing amidst the sea of shadows, Bear witness to its solitude
To the silence of the light.
I have seen vessels tied and aneurysms clipped, And an eon has gone by... There’s an air of anticipation, An expectation of something more.
But, solace and quietude prevail
The light remains resolute
The microscope remains afloat in the same place For eternity and evermore...
Anurag Modak, MD
Class of 2024
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
To My Patient: Know that you are loved
I think of you when I attend ACR
How you lost your hair and had a rash so bizarre
You itch and scratch and scratch and itch Whoever knew lupus could be such a bitch
From fatigue to kidney issues, mouth sores, and joint pains
You trusted us to treat you, to take the reins
Some medications helped and others did the reverse At ACR is where I digest your case, fully immersed
We’ll always strive to do our best for you As serving our patients is our life’s biggest virtue
I promise, that as your doctor, you will be cared for, unjudged That as my patient, know that you are loved.
Mary Salim, MD PGY-5, Rheumatology Fellow Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ”
-Kahlil Gibran Writer, poet, and visual artist
Dedicated to Dr. James Hill (1959-2025)